Jan Brewer: Obama 'didn't feel I treated him cordially'

By DONOVAN SLACK

01/25/2012 06:25 PM EST

(AP Photo)

It was a tense moment on the tarmac.

President Obama, alighting from the stairs of Air Force One in Phoenix this afternoon, was greeted by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, who handed him an envelope and the two exchanged what appeared to be some heated sentiments. At one point, she pointed her finger at him.

"I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president. The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read the excerpt," she said, according to a pool report. "He didn't feel that I had treated him cordially. I said I was sorry he felt that way but I didn't get my sentence finished. Anyway, we're glad he's here. I'll regroup."

In the envelope she had given him was a handwritten letter, Brewer said -- "an invitation that I've extended to him before with regards to coming to Arizona and going to the border with me....We've had a remarkable comeback here and I want to share that with him."

A White House official confirmed the invitation and described the encounter in more bureaucratic terms: "The President said he'd be glad to meet with her again, but did note that after their last meeting, a cordial discussion in the Oval Office, the governor inaccurately described the meeting in her book. The President looks forward to continuing taking steps to help Arizona's economy grow."

The pool reporter, POLITICO's Carrie Budoff Brown, said the scene was far from the norm. Aside from the pointing, they appeared to talk over each other and he appeared to walk away from her while they were still talking.

Brewer said the president brought up the book.

"I thought we probably would've talked about the things that were important to him and important to me, helping one another," she said, appearing flustered.

"Our country is upside down. Arizona was upside down. But we have turned it around. I know again that he loves this country and I love this country."

Brewer is not accompanying the president during a visit to Intel.

The passage in Brewer's book that the president was apparently referring to recounts a meeting at the White House when they discussed border security and immigration.

“It was [as] though President Obama thought he could lecture me, and I would learn at his knee,” she wrote, according to Capitol Media Services. “He thinks he can humor me and then get rid of me.”